If the scale of a victory can be measured by one man's fist-pumping after the final whistle, then Gary Neville's repeated forearm smashes as he walked towards Manchester United's noisy, droll and ecstatic travelling support said that this was one of those decisive 90 minutes on which championships are built. Cristiano Ronaldo's 19th-minute tumble may have dominated talk on Teesside and beyond but Neville's comment afterwards may be seen as equally telling in the longer term. "I just have a feeling now we are not going to fall away," Neville said.

When Neville spoke, it was clear that the neutral had not read too much into United's celebrations, reminiscent of Chelsea's at Blackburn in the January of their first title season. United finished 18 points behind Chelsea then; last season the deficit was eight, with Chelsea slowing once past the post.

Now, however, as Neville said, should United beat Manchester City at Old Trafford on Saturday, by the time Chelsea host Arsenal on Sunday Sir Alex Ferguson's team could be nine points ahead. That would be a new experience for Chelsea under Jose Mourinho and the mere thought of this situation is welcome.

The Premiership needs the competition and Neville said United are ready to provide it again: "We feel as though we have developed over the last two or three years. We have suffered over that time but you can see that in these types of games last year we weren't getting the result. Sheffield United, Blackburn and Middlesbrough are three really tough away games but we have won them all."

As Neville also intimated, United's pleasure at the Riverside was not just because Chelsea lost 2-1 here in August. This was, no one at United has forgotten, the setting for one of last season's more telling scenes. Ferguson, watching his side trail 3-0 at half-time, eventually losing 4-1, said: "Middlesbrough cuffed us."

It was about to get worse as his then captain, Roy Keane, was to Play the Pundit on MUTV, then they went to Stade de France, where Lille won 1-0. That was a staging-post result to United finishing fourth in their Champions League group. Ultimately that placing was confirmed by a 2-1 defeat at Benfica in the first week of December and on Wednesday, 364 days on, it is Benfica again standing in the way of qualification, this time at Old Trafford.

"With our form, and as long as we remember to finish things off, I think we'll be fine," Ferguson said of Wednesday. "We have to take our chances, it's a game we can't trifle with." Ryan Giggs and Louis Saha missed opportunities here, but then Abel Xavier hit the post for Boro.

But, if Champions League uncertainty is an echo of last year, United are not. Inevitably, understandably, Gareth Southgate's opinion was coloured by Ronaldo and the "C" word, but the Boro manager was prepared to step back from that, too. "A year on the side has matured," Southgate said of United, "they seem to have more steel about them."

Southgate had been asked moments before if he thought that Ronaldo's fall constituted "cheating". "Yeah, it's as simple as that," came the frank reply. Mark Schwarzer, the Middlesbrough keeper, withdrew his leg just as Ronaldo seized Louis Saha's pass but, at speed, Ronaldo went down regardless. Southgate said of Ronaldo, "the lad has history."

And further evidence came 20 minutes later, when he left a leg in on George Boateng in order to give the impression that he had been fouled. It worked for Ronaldo, and he nearly scored from the free-kick, but the bigger picture is that his trickiness came close to overshadowing United's glowing flow.

Southgate argued that Ronaldo's penalty award, converted by the impressive Saha, changed the game and the result. He has a point. While Ferguson will not like the focus on Ronaldo, he would not have been pleased to have a penalty award like that go against United. Ferguson may even have thought of Internazionale's Ivan Zamorano and what a keystone moment his non-penalty in the San Siro in 1999 was in the Treble.

Paul Scholes scored in that Inter game and nearly eight years on he continues to exhibit class. "In the period I was playing he was the best England player," the generous Southgate said of him. "There was probably [Paul] Gascoigne in the decade before, Scholes in the period I was involved in, then [Wayne] Rooney towards the end of my time."

Scholes's 68th-minute interception initiated the winner. United needed it, with James Morrison having equalised two minutes earlier after lovely work from Stewart Downing. Boro were pumped up but Downing's next pass went to Scholes and from there to Ronaldo, who stayed upright in the area, and to Giggs whose cross was met by Darren Fletcher.

It was the seventh away win in eight for United. "We can look at this as a significant result," said Ferguson.